Against Ctesiphon
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Original / primary: Perseus Eng2
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Here again, in this resolution, you see how entirely absorbed he is in his thievery, for he also moves that your ambassadors ask the people of Oreus to give their five talents, not to you, but to Callias. But to prove that I am speaking the truth, read—leave out the grandiloquence and the triremes and the pretence, and come to the trick worked on us by the vile and wicked man, who, according to Ctesiphon’s motion which we are discussing, constantly speaks and does what is best for the people of Athens.
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Resolution So then the triremes and the land forces and the full moon and the congress were so much talk for your ears, but the contributions of the allies, those ten talents, were very real, and you lost them.
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It remains for me to say that Demosthenes was paid three talents for making this motion: a talent from Chalcis, paid over by Callias, a talent from Eretria, paid by the tyrant Cleitarchus, and a talent from Oreus. And it was this last by means of which he was found out; for the government of Oreus is a democracy, and everything is done there by popular vote. Now they, exhausted by the war and entirely without means, sent to him Gnosidemus, son of Charigenes, a man who had once been powerful in Oreus, to ask him to release the city from paying the talent, and to offer him a statue of bronze to be set up in Oreus.
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But he replied to Gnosidemus that the last thing that he was in need of was bronze, and he tried to collect the talent through Callias. Now the people of Oreus, pressed for payment and without means, mortgaged to him the public revenues as security for the talent, and paid Demosthenes interest on the fruit of his bribery at the rate of a drachma per month on the mina,
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until they paid off the principal.
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This was done by vote of the people. To prove that what I am telling you is true, please take the decree of the people of Oreus. Decree This is the decree, fellow citizens, a disgrace to our city, no slight exposure of Demosthenes’ policies, and a clear accusation against Ctesiphon as well. For the man who so shamelessly received bribes cannot have been the good man that Ctesiphon has dared to set forth.
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I come now to the third period, or rather to that bitterest period of all, in which Demosthenes brought ruin upon our state and upon all Hellas by his impiety toward the shrine at Delphi, and by moving the alliance with Thebes—an unjust alliance and utterly unequal. But I will begin with his sins against the the gods.
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There is, fellow citizens, a plain, called the plain of Cirrha, and a harbor, now known as dedicate and accursed. This district was once inhabited by the Cirrhaeans and the Cragalidae, most lawless tribes, who repeatedly committed sacrilege against the shrine at Delphi and the votive offerings there, and who transgressed against the Amphictyons also. This conduct exasperated all the Amphictyons, and your ancestors most of all, it is said, and they sought at the shrine of the god an oracle to tell them with what penalty they should visit these men.
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The Pythia replied that they must fight against the Cirrhaeans and the Cragalidae day and night, bitterly ravage their country, enslave the inhabitants, and dedicate the land to the Pythian Apollo and Artemis and Leto and Athena Pronaea,The MSS. read Προνοίᾳ, Goddess of Forethought. But undoubtedly the form in the ancient oracle was Προναίᾳ, a name peculiar to the Athena of Delphi, and arising from the fact that there she was the Athena of the Foretemple (προ-ναός), for her temple lay in front of that of Apollo. that for the future it lie entirely uncultivated; that they must not till this land themselves nor permit another. Now when they had received this oracle, the Amphictyons voted, on motion of Solon of Athens, a man able as a law-giver and versed in poetry and philosophy, to march against the accursed men according to the oracle of the god.
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Collecting a great force of the Amphictyons, they enslaved the men, destroyed their harbor and city, and dedicated their land, as the oracle had commanded. Moreover they swore a mighty oath, that they would not themselves till the sacred land nor let another till it, but that they would go to the aid of the god and the sacred land with hand and foot and voice, and all their might.
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They were not content with taking this oath, but they added an imprecation and a mighty curse concerning this; for it stands thus written in the curse : If any one should violate this, it says, whether city or private man, or tribe, let them be under the curse, it says, of Apollo and Artemis and Leto and Athena Pronaea.
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The curse goes on: That their land bear no fruit; that their wives bear children not like those who begat them, but monsters; that their flocks yield not their natural increase; that defeat await them in camp and court and market-place, and that they perish utterly, themselves, their houses, their whole race; And never, it says, may they offer pure sacrifice unto Apollo, nor to Artemis, nor to Leto, nor to Athena Pronaea, and may the gods refuse to accept their offerings.
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As a proof of this, let the oracle of the god be read; hear the curse; call to mind the oaths that your fathers swore together with all the other Amphictyons.
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The Oracle
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[Ye may not hope to capture town nor tower,
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Till dark-eyed Amphitrite’s waves shall break
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And roar against Apollo’s sacred shore.]The oracle given in the MSS. is evidently not the one that Aeschines cited. Some ancient editor has inserted it, finding it in Pausanias’ account of these events.
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Paus. 10.7.6
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The Oaths. The Curse This curse, these oaths, and this oracle stand recorded to this day; yet the Locrians of Amphissa, or rather their leaders, most lawless of men, did till the plain, and they rebuilt the walls of the harbor that was dedicate and accursed, and settled there and collected port-dues from those who sailed into the harbor and of the deputiesSee on Aeschin. 3.115. who came to Delphi they corrupted some with money, one of whom was Demosthenes.
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For after he had been elected your deputy,
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he received two thousand drachmas from the Amphissians, in return for which he was to see that no mention of them should he made in the assembly of the Amphictyons. And it was agreed with him that thereafter twenty minas of the accursed and abominable money should he sent to
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Athens
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to him yearly, on condition that he at
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Athens
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aid the Amphissians in every way. In consequence of this it has come to pass even more than before, that whatsoever he touches, be it private citizen, or ruler, or democratic state, becomes entangled, every one, in irreparable misfortune.
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Now behold how providence and fortune triumphed over the impiety of the Amphissians. It was in the archonship of Theophrastus;
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Diognetus of Anaphlystus was our hieromnemon; as pylagori
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you elected Meidias of Anagyrus, whom you all remember—I wish for many reasons he were still living
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—and Thrasycles of Oeum; I was the third. But it happened that we were no sooner come to
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Delphi
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than Diognetus, the hieromnemon, fell sick with fever; the same misfortune had befallen Meidias already.
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The other Amphictyons took their seats. Now it was reported to us by one and another who wished to show friendship to our city, that the Amphissians, who were at that time dominated by the Thebans and were their abject servants, were in the act of bringing in a resolution against our city, to the effect that the people of Athens be fined fifty talents, because we had affixed gilded shields to the new temple and dedicated them before the temple had been consecrated, and had written the appropriate inscription, The Athenians, from the Medes and Thebans when they fought against Hellas.The temple of Apollo at Delphi had been seriously injured by fire in 373 b.c. Repairs had been going on under an inter state commission. The work had been interrupted by the Phocian war, but was at this time nearing completion. The shields that the Athenians had caused to be re-hung were a part of the Athenian booty from the battle of Plataea. For almost a century and a half they had been an eyesore to the Thebans. The hieromnemon sent for me and asked me to go into the council and speak to the Amphictyons in behalf of our city—indeed I had already determined of myself so to do.
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When I had entered the council, perhaps a little too impetuously—the other pylagori had withdrawn
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—and when I was just beginning to speak, one of the Amphissians, a scurrilous fellow, and, as I plainly saw, a man of no education whatever, but perhaps also led on to folly by some divine visitation, cried out,
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O Greeks, if you were in your right mind, you would not have so much as named the name of the people of Athens in these sacred days, hut you would have debarred them from the shrine, as men polluted.
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And at the same time he reminded them of your alliance with the Phocians, proposed by that man whom we used to call Top-knot;see on Aeschin. 1.64. and he went through a long list of vexatious charges against our city, which angered me almost beyond endurance as I listened to them then, and which it is no pleasure to recall now. For as I listened, I was exasperated as never before in my life. I will pass over the rest of what I said, but this occurred to me, to call attention to the impiety of the Amphissians in relation to the sacred land; and from the very spot where I was standing I pointed it out to the Amphictyons for the plain of Cirrha lies just below the shrine and is clearly visible.
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You see, I said, O Amphictyons, the plain yonder tilled by the Amphissians, and pottery works and farm buildings erected there. You see with your own eyes the dedicated and accursed harbor walled again. You know of your own knowledge, and have no need of other witness, how these men have farmed out port-dues, and how they are making money from the sacred harbor. At the same time I called for the reading of the oracle of the god, the oath of our fathers, and the curse that was proclaimed. And I made this declaration:
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I, in behalf of the people of Athens, in my own behalf, and in behalf of my children and my house, do come to the help of the god and the sacred land according unto the oath, with hand and foot and voice, and all my powers and I purge our city of this impiety. As for you, now make your own decision. The sacred baskets are prepared; the sacrificial victims stand ready at the altars and you are about to pray to the gods for blessings on state and hearth.
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Consider then with what voice, with what spirit, with what countenance, possessed of what effrontery, you will make your supplications, if you let go unpunished these men, who stand under the ban of the curse. For not in riddles, but plainly is written the penalty to be suffered by those who have been guilty of impiety, and for those who have permitted it; and the curse closes with these words: May they who fail to punish them never offer pure sacrifice unto Apollo, nor to Artemis, nor to Leto, nor to Athena Pronaea, and may the gods refuse to accept their offerings.
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These words I spoke, and many more. And when now I had finished and gone out from the council, there was great outcry and excitement among the Amphictyons, and nothing more was said about the shields that we had dedicated, but from now on the subject was the punishment of the Amphissians. As it was already late in the day, the herald came forward and made proclamation that all the men of Delphi who were of full age, slaves and free men alike, should come at daybreak on the morrow with shovels and mattocks to the place that is there called the Thyteion. And again the same herald proclaimed that all the hieromnemons and the pylagori should come to the same place to the aid of the god and the sacred land; And whatever city shall fail to appear, shall he debarred from the shrine and shall be impure and under the curse.
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The next morning we came to the designated spot, and descended to the Cirrhaean plain. And when we had despoiled the harbor and burned down the houses, we set out to return. But meanwhile the Locrians of Amphissa, who lived sixty stadia from Delphi, came against us, armed and in full force; and it was only by running that we barely got back to Delphi in safety, for we were in peril of our lives.
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Now on the next day Cottyphus, the presiding officer, called an
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assembly
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of the Amphictyons (they call it an
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assembly
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when not only the pylagori and hieromnemons are called together,but with them those who are sacrificing and consulting the god). Then immediately one charge after another was brought against the Amphissians, and our city was much praised. As the outcome of all that was said,they voted that before the next Pylaea
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the hieromnemons should assemble at
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Thermopylae
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at a time designated, bringing with them a resolution for the punishment of the Amphissians for their sins against the god and the sacred land and the Amphictyons. As proof of what I say, the clerk shall read the decree to you.
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Decree Now when we had reported this decree to our senate, and then to the assembly, and when the people had approved our acts, and the whole city was ready to choose the righteous course, and when Demosthenes had spoken in opposition—he was earning his retaining-fee from Amphissa—and when I had clearly convicted him in your presence, thereupon the fellow, unable to frustrate the city by open means, goes into the senate chamber, expels all listeners, and from the secret session brings out a bill to the assembly, taking advantage of the inexperience of the man who made the motion.Aeschines implies that Demosthenes drafted the motion in a form which gave it a very different effect from what was expected by the inexperienced senator through whom he had it presented to the senate.
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And he managed to have this same bill put to vote in the assembly and passed by the people, at the moment when the assembly was on the point of adjourning, when I had already left the place—for I would never have allowed it—and when most of the people had dispersed. Now the substance of the bill was this: The hieromnemon of the Athenians, it says, and the pylagori who are at the time in office, shall go to Thermopylae and Delphi at the times appointed by our fathers; fine in sound, shameful in fact; for it prevents attendance on the special meeting at Thermopylae, which had to be held before the date of the regular meeting.
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Again in the same decree he writes much more explicitly and malignantly; The hieromnemon of the Athenians, he says, and the pylagori who are at the time in office, shall take no part with those assembled there, in word or deed or decree, or in any act whatsoever. But what does it mean to take no part? Shall I tell you the truth, or what is most agreeable for your ears? I will tell you the truth, for it is the universal habit of speaking to please you that has brought the city to such a pass. It means that you are forbidden to remember the oaths which our fathers swore, or the curse, or the oracle of the god.
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And so, fellow citizens, we stayed at home because of this decree, while the other Amphictyons assembled at Thermopylae—all but one city, whose name I would not mention; I pray that misfortune like unto hers may come upon no city of
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Hellas
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.
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And when they were assembled they voted to march against the Amphissians. As general they chose Cottyphus of Pharsalus, who was at the time president of the Amphictyons. Philip was not in
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at that time, nor in
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, but in Scythia—so far away as that! And yet presently Demosthenes will dare to say that it was I who brought him against
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!
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Now when they had come through the pass
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in the first expedition, they dealt very leniently with the Amphissians, for as penalty for their monstrous crimes, they laid a money fine upon them, and ordered them to pay it at the temple within a stated time; and they removed the wicked men who were responsible for what had been done, and restored others, whose piety had forced them into exile. But when the Amphissians failed to pay the money to the god, and had restored the guilty men, and banished those righteous men who had been restored by the Amphictyons, under these circumstances at last the second campaign was made, a long time afterward, when Philip had now returned from his Scythian expedition. It was to us that the gods had offered the leadership in the deed of piety, but Demosthenes’ taking of bribes had prevented us.
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But did not the gods forewarn us, did they not admonish us, to be on our guard, all but speaking with human voice? No city have I ever seen offered more constant protection by the gods, but more inevitably ruined by certain of its politicians. Was not that portent sufficient which appeared at the Mysteries—the death of the celebrants?
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In view of this did not Ameiniades warn you to be on your guard, and to send messengers to
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to inquire of the god what was to he done? And did not Demosthenes oppose, and say that the Pythia had gone over to Philip? Boor that he was, gorged with his feast of indulgence from you!
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And did he not at last from smouldering and ill-omened sacrifices send forth our troops into manifest danger? And yet it was but yesterday that he dared to assert that the reason why Philip did not advance against our country
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was that the omens were not favorable to him. What punishment, then, do you deserve, you curse of
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! For if the conqueror refrained from entering the land of the conquered because the omens were not favorable to him, whereas you, ignorant of the future, sent out our troops before the omens were propitious, ought you to be receiving a crown for the misfortunes of the city, or to have been thrust already beyond her borders?
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Wherefore what is there, strange and unexpected, that has not happened in our time!
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For it is not the life of men we have lived, but we were born to be a tale of wonder to posterity. Is not the king of the Persians—he who channelled
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Athos
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, he who bridged the
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Hellespont
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, he who demanded earth and water of the Greeks, he who dared to write in his letters that he was lord of all men from the rising of the sun unto its setting—is he not struggling now, no longer for lordship over others, but already for his life?
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And do we not see this glory and the leadership against the Persians bestowed on the same men who liberated the temple of
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Delphi
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?
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But
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Thebes
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!
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Thebes
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, our neighbor, has in one day been swept from the midst of Hellas—even though justly, for her main policy was wrong, yet possessed by an infatuate blindness and folly that were not of men, but a divine visitation. And the wretched Lacedaemonians, who barely touched these acts at their beginning in connection with the seizure of the temple,
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they who once claimed the right to lead the Greeks, are now about to be sent to Alexander to serve as hostages, and to make an exhibition of their misfortunes
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—destined, themselves and their country, to suffer whatever may please him; their fate dependent on the mercy of the man who has conquered them after receiving unprovoked injury at their hands.
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And our city, the common refuge of the Greeks, to which in former days used to come the embassies of all Hellas, each city in turn to find safety with us, our city is now no longer contending for the leadership of Hellas, but from this time on for the soil of the fatherland. And this has come upon us from the time when Demosthenes came into political leadership. Well does the poet Hesiod speak concerning such men; for he says somewhere, instructing the people and advising the cities not to take to themselves corrupt politicians—but I will myself recite the verses;
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for this is the reason, I think, that in our childhood we commit to memory the sentiments of the poets, that when we are men we may make use of them:
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Ofttimes whole peoples suffer from one man,
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Whose deeds are sinful, and whose purpose base.
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From heaven Cromon launches on their heads
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Dire woe of plague and famine joined; and all
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The people waste away. Or else he smites
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Their wide-camped host, or wall. Or wrath of Zeus
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Far-thundering wrecks their ships upon the sea.
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Hes. WD 240
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If you disregard the poet’s meter and examine only his thought, I think this will seem to you to be, not a poem of Hesiod, but an oracle directed against the politics of Demosthenes. For by his politics army and navy and peoples have been utterly destroyed.
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I think that not Phrynondas and not Eurybatus, nor any other of the traitors of ancient times ever proved himself such a juggler and cheat as this man, who, oh earth and heaven, oh ye gods and men—if any men of you will listen to the truth—dares to look you in the face and say that Thebes actually made the alliance with you, not because of the crisis, not because of the fear that was impending over them, not because of your reputation, but because of Demosthenes’ declamations!
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And yet in other days many men who had stood in the closest relations with the Thebans had gone on missions to them; first, Thrasymachus of Collytus, a man trusted in Thebes as no other ever was; again, Thrason of Erchia, proxenus of the Thebans;
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Leodamas of Acharnae, a speaker no less able than Demosthenes, and more to my taste; Archedemus of Pelekes, a powerful speaker, and one who had met many political dangers for the sake of the Thebans; Aristophon of Azenia, who had long been subject to the charge of having gone over to the Boeotians; Pyrrhandrus of Anaphlystus, who is still living. Yet no one of these was ever able to persuade them to be friends with you. And I know the reason, but because of the present misfortune of
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, I have no desire to speak it.
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But, I think, when Philip had taken
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Nicaea
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from them and given it to the Thessalians, and when he was now bringing back again upon
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Thebes
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herself through
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Phocis
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the same war that he had formerly driven from the borders of
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Boeotia
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,
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and when finally he had seized
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Elateia
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and fortified and garrisoned it,
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then, and not till then, it was, when the peril was laying hold on them, that they sent for the Athenians. You went out and were on the point of marching into
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under arms, horse and foot, before ever Demosthenes had moved one single syllable about an alliance.
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What brought you into Thebes was the crisis and fear and need of alliance, not Demosthenes. For in this whole affair Demosthenes is responsible to you for three most serious mistakes. The first was this: when Philip was nominally making war against you, but really was far more the enemy of Thebes, as the event itself has proved (why need I say more?), Demosthenes concealed these facts, which were so important, and pretending that the alliance was to be brought about, not through the crisis, but through his own negotiations,
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first he persuaded the people to give up all consideration of the terms of the alliance, and to count themselves fortunate if only it were made; and when he had gained this point he betrayed all
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to the Thebans by writing in the decree,
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If any city refuse to follow Thebes, the Athenians shall aid the Boeotians in Thebes,
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cheating with words and altering the facts, as he is wont to do; as though, forsooth, when the Boeotians should be suffering in fact, they would be content with Demosthenes’ fine phrases, rather than indignant at the outrageous way in which they had been treated;
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and, secondly, he laid two thirds of the costs of the war upon you, whose danger was more remote, and only one third on the Thebans (in all this acting for bribes); and the leadership by sea he caused to be shared equally by both; but all the expenditure he laid upon you and the leadership by land, if we are not to talk nonsense, he carried away bodily and handed it over to Thebes. The result was that in all the war that followed, Stratocles, your general, had no authority to plan for the safety of his troops.
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And it is not true that in this I alone accuse, while others are silent; nay, I speak, all men blame him, you know the facts—and are not angry! For this is your experience as regards Demosthenes: you have so long been accustomed to hear of his crimes that they no longer surprise you. But it ought not so to be; you ought to be indignant, and to punish him, if the city is to prosper in the future.
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But he was guilty of a second and far greater crime; for he stole the senate-house of the city and the democracy outright and carried them off to Thebes, to the Cadmeia, by his agreement with the Boeotarchs for joint control. And he contrived such domination for himself that now he came forward to the platform and declared that he was going as ambassador wherever he chose, whether you sent him or not;
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and, treating your magistrates as his slaves, and teaching them to raise no word of opposition against him, he declared that if any of the generals should oppose him,
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he would bring suit to settle the claims of the speakers’ platform as against those of the war office; for he said you owed more benefits to him from the platform than to the generals from the war office. And by drawing pay for empty places in the mercenary force,
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by stealing the pay of the troops, and by hiring out those ten thousand mercenaries to the Amphissians
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against my repeated protests and complaints in the assembly—when the mercenaries had thus been carried off, he rushed the city all unprepared into the mist of peril.
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What, think you, would Philip have prayed for at that crisis? Would it not have been that he might in one place fight against the city’s forces, and in another, in Amphissa, against the mercenaries, and thus close his hand upon the Greeks already discouraged by so great a disaster? And Demosthenes, who is responsible for such misfortunes as that, is not content with escaping punishment, but is miserable unless he shall he crowned with a golden crown! Nor is he satisfied that the crown shall be announced in your presence, but if it is not to he proclaimed before the Hellenes, he is miserable over that. So true it seems to be that a wicked nature, when it has laid hold on great license, works out public disaster.
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But the third and greatest of the crimes that I have mentioned is that which I am about to describe. Philip did not despise the Greeks, and he was well aware (for he was not without understanding) that he was about to contend in a little fraction of a day for all that he possessed; for that reason he wished to make peace, and was on the point of sending envoys. The officials at Thebes also were frightened at the impending danger—naturally, for they had no run-away orator and deserter to advise them, but the ten years’ Phocian war had taught them a lesson not to be forgotten.
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Now when Demosthenes saw that such was the situation, suspecting that the Boeotarchs were about to conclude a separate peace and get gold from Philip without his being in it, and thinking that life was not worth living if he was to be left out of any act of bribery, he jumped up in the assembly, when no man was saying a word either in favour of making peace with Philip or against it; and with the idea of serving a sort of notice on the Boeotarchs that they must turn over to him his share of the gain, he swore by Athena
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(whose statue, it seems, Pheidias wrought expressly that Demosthenes might have it to perjure himself by and to make profit of) that if any one should say that we ought to make peace with Philip, he would seize him by the hair and drag him to prison—in this imitating the politics of Cleophon, who, they tell us, in the time of the war against the Lacedaemonians, brought ruin to the state. But when the officials in Thebes would pay no attention to him, but even turned your soldiers back again when they had marched out, for they wished to give you an opportunity to deliberate concerning peace,
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then indeed he became frantic, and went forward to the platform and stigmatized the Boeotarchs as traitors to Hellas, and declared that he would move a decree—he, who never looked on the face of an enemy in arms !—that you should send ambassadors to Thebes to ask them to give you free passage through their country for the march against Philip. But the officials in Thebes, ashamed lest they should seem in reality to be traitors to Hellas, turned from the thought of peace, and threw themselves into the war.
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Here indeed it is fitting that we should pay the tribute of memory to those brave men whom he, regardless of the smouldering and ill-omened sacrifices, sent forth into manifest danger—he who, when they had fallen, dared to set his cowardly and runaway feet upon their tomb and eulogize the valor of the dead.
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O man of all mankind most useless for great and serious deeds, but for boldness of words most wonderful, will you presently undertake to look this jury in the face and say that over the disasters of the city you must be crowned? And, gentlemen, if he does, will you endure it? Are we to believe that you and your memory are to die with the dead?
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I ask you to imagine for a little time that you are not in the court-room, but in the theater, and to imagine that you see the herald coming forward to make the proclamation under the decree; consider whether you believe the relatives of the dead will shed more tears over the tragedies and the sufferings of the heroes soon afterward to be presented on the stage, or over the blindness of the city.
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For what Greek, nurtured in freedom, would not mourn as he sat in the theater and recalled this, if nothing more, that once on this day, when as now the tragedies were about to be performed, in a time when the city had better customs and followed better leaders, the herald would come forward and place before you the orphans whose fathers had died in battle, young men clad in the panoply of war; and he would utter that proclamation so honorable and so incentive to valor; These young men, whose fathers showed themselves brave men and died in war, have been supported by the state until they have come of age and now, clad thus in full armour by their fellow citizens, they are sent out with the prayers of the city, to go each his way and they are invited to seats of honor in the theater.
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This was the proclamation then, but not today. For when the herald has led forward the man who is responsible for making the children orphans, what will he proclaim? What words will he utter? For if he shall recite the mere dictates of the decree, yet the truth, ashamed, will refuse to be silent, and we shall seem to hear it crying out in words which contradict the voice of the herald, This man, if man he can be called, the Athenian people crown, the basest— ‘for his virtue’ and ‘for his nobility‘—the coward and deserter.
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No! by Zeus and the gods, do not, my fellow citizens, do not, I beseech you, set up in the orchestra of Dionysus a memorial of your own defeat; do not in the presence of the Greeks convict the Athenian people of having lost their reason; do not remind the poor Thebans of their incurable and irreparable disasters, men who, exiled through Demosthenes’ acts, found refuge with you, when their shrines and children and tombs had been destroyed by Demosthenes’ taking of bribes and by the Persian gold.
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But since you were not present in person, yet in imagination behold their disaster; imagine that you see their city taken, the razing of their walls, the burning of their homes; their women and children led into captivity; their old men, their aged matrons, late in life learning to forget what freedom means; weeping, supplicating you, angry not so much at those who are taking vengeance upon them, as at the men who are responsible for it all and calling on you by no means to crown the curse of Hellas, but rather to guard yourselves against the evil genius and the fate that ever pursue the man.
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For there is no city, there is no private man—not one—that has ever come off safe after following Demosthenes’ counsel. You have passed a law, fellow citizens, governing the men who steer the boats across the strait to Salamis; if one of them by accident overturns a boat in the strait, your law permits him no longer to be a ferryman, in order that no man may be careless of Greek lives; are you not then ashamed if this man, who has utterly overturned the city and all Hellas, if this man is to be permitted again to pilot the ship of state?
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But that I may speak concerning the fourth period also, and the present situation, I wish to remind you of this fact, that Demosthenes not only deserted his post in the army, but his post in the city also; for he took possession of one of your triremes and levied money upon the Greeks.
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But when our unexpected safety
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had brought him hack to the city, during the first months the man was timid, and he came forward half-dead to the platform and urged you to elect him
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preserver of the peace.
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But as for you, you would not even let resolutions that were passed bear the name of Demosthenes as the mover, but gave that honor to Nausicles. And yet, to-day, here is Demosthenes actually demanding a crown!
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But when Philip was dead and Alexander had come to the throne, Demosthenes again put on prodigious airs and caused a shrine to he dedicated to Pausanias
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and involved the senate in the charge of having offered sacrifice of thanksgiving as for good news. And he nicknamed Alexander
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Margites
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;
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and had the effrontery to say that Alexander would never stir out of
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Macedonia
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, for he was content, he said, to saunter around
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in
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Pella
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, and keep watch over the omens; and he said this statement was not based on conjecture, but on accurate knowledge, for valor was to be purchased at the price of blood. For Demosthenes, having no blood himself, formed his judgment of Alexander, not from Alexander’s nature, but from his own cowardice.
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But when now the Thessalians had voted to march against our city, and the young Alexander was at first bitterly angry—naturally
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—and when the army was near
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Thebes
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, Demosthenes, who had been elected ambassador by you, turned back when halfway across Cithaeron and came running home—useless in peace and war alike! And worst of all: while you did not surrender him
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nor allow him to be brought to trial in the synod of the Greeks, he has betrayed you now, if current report is true.
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For, as the people of the Paralus say,
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and those who have been ambassadors to Alexander—and the story is sufficiently credible—there is one Aristion, a man of Plataean status,
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son of Aristobulus the apothecary, known perhaps to some of you. This young man, distinguished for extraordinary beauty of person, once lived a long time in Demosthenes’ house (what he used to do there or what was done to him, is a scandal that is in dispute, and the story is one that would be quite improper for me to repeat). Now I am told that this Aristion, his origin and personal history being unknown to the king, is worming himself into favour with Alexander and getting access to him. Through him Demosthenes has sent a letter to Alexander, and has secured a certain degree of immunity for himself, and reconciliation; and he has carried his flattery to great lengths.
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But see from the following how the facts tally with the charge. For if Demosthenes had been bent on war with Alexander, as he claims to have been, or had any thought of it, three of the best opportunities in the world have been offered to him, and, as you see, he has not seized one of them. One, the first, was when Alexander, newly come to the throne, and not yet fairly settled in his personal affairs, crossed into Asia. The king of Persia was at the height of his power then, with ships and money and troops,and he would gladly have received us into his alliance because of the dangers that were threatening him. But did you, Demosthenes, at that time say a word? Did you move a decree? Shall I assume that you followed your natural disposition and were frightened? And yet the public opportunity waits not for the orator’s fears.
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But when Darius was come down to the coast
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with all his forces, and Alexander was shut up in
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Cilicia
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in extreme want, as you yourself said, and was, according to your statement, on the point of being trampled under the hoofs of the Persian horse, and when there was not room enough in the city to contain your odious demonstrations and the letters that you carried around, dangling them from your fingers, while you pointed to my face as showing my discouragement and consternation, and in anticipation of some mishap to Alexander you called me
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gilded horn,
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and said the garland was already on my head,
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not even then did you take one step, but deferred it all for some more favorable opportunity.
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But I will pass over all this, and speak of the most recent events. The Lacedaemonians and their mercenary force had been successful in battle and had destroyed the forces of Corrhagus;
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the Eleans and the Achaeans, all but the people of
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Pellene
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, had come over to them, and so had all
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Arcadia
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except
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Megalopolis
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, and that city was under siege and its capture was daily expected. Meanwhile Alexander had withdrawn to the uttermost regions of the North, almost beyond the borders of the inhabited world, and Antipater was slow in collecting an army; the whole outcome was uncertain. Pray set forth to us, Demosthenes, what in the world there was that you did then, or what in the world there was that you said. I will yield the platform to you, if you wish, until you have told us.
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You are silent. I can well understand your embarrassment. But what you said then, I myself will tell now. Do you not remember, gentlemen, his disgusting and incredible words? Ye men of iron, how had you ever the endurance to listen to them! When he came forward and said, Certain men are pruning the city, certain men have trimmed off the tendrils of the people, the sinews of the state have been cut, we are being matted and sewed up, certain men are first drawing us like needles into tight places.
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What are these things, you beast? Are they words or monstrosities? And again when you whirled around in a circle on the platform and said, pretending that you were working against Alexander, I admit that I organized the Laconian uprising, I admit that I am bringing about the revolt of the Thessalians and the Perrhaebi. You cause a revolt of the Thessalians? What! Could you cause the revolt of a village? Would you actually approach—let us talk not about a city—would you actually approach a house, where there was danger? But if money is being paid out anywhere, you will lay siege to the place; a man’s deed you will never do. If any good-fortune come of itself, you will lay claim to it, and sign your name to the thing after it has been done; but if any danger approach, you will run away; and then if we regain confidence, you will call for rewards and crowns of gold.
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Yes, but he is a friend of the people! If now you attend only to the plausible sound of his words, you will be deceived as in the past; but if you look at his character and the truth, you will not be deceived. Call him to account in this way: with your help I will reckon up what ought to be the inborn qualities of the friend of the people and the orderly citizen; and over against them I will set down what manner of man one would expect the oligarch and the worthless man to be. And I ask you to compare the two and to see to which class he belongs—not by his professions, but by his life.
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I think you would all acknowledge that the following qualities ought to he found in the friend of the people: in the first place, he should be free-born, on both his father’s and his mother’s side, lest because of misfortune of birth he be disloyal to the laws that preserve the democracy. In the second place, he should have as a legacy from his ancestors some service which they have done to the democracy, or at the very least there must he no inherited enmity against it, lest in the attempt to avenge the misfortunes of his family he undertake to injure the city.
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Thirdly, he ought to be temperate and self-restrained in his daily life, lest to support his wanton extravagance he take bribes against the people. Fourthly, he ought to be a man of good judgment and an able speaker; for it is well that his discernment choose the wisest course, and his training in rhetoric and his eloquence persuade the hearers; but if he cannot have both, good judgment is always to be preferred to eloquence of speech. Fifthly, he ought to be a man of brave heart, that in danger and peril he may not desert the people. But the oligarch we should expect to have all the opposite qualities; why need I go over them again? Examine, then, and see what one of these qualities belongs to Demosthenes. And let the reckoning be made with all fairness.
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His father was Demosthenes of Paeania, a free man, for there is no need of lying. But how the case stands as to his inheritance from his mother and his maternal grandfather, I will tell you. There was a certain Gylon of Cerameis. This man betrayed
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Nymphaeum
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in the
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Pontus
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to the enemy, for the place at that time belonged to our city.
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He was impeached and became an exile from the city, not awaiting trial. He came to
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Bosporus
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and there received as a present from the tyrants of the land a place called
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the Gardens.
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Here he married a woman who was rich, I grant you, and brought him a big dowry, but a Scythian by blood. This wife bore him two daughters, whom he sent hither with plenty of money. One he married to a man whom I will not name—for I do not care to incur the enmity of many persons,—the other, in contempt of the laws of the city,
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Demosthenes of Paeania took to wife. She it was who bore your busy-body and informer. From his grandfather, therefore, he would inherit enmity toward the people, for you condemned his ancestors to death and by his mother’s blood he would be a Scythian, a Greek-tongued barbarian—so that his knavery, too, is no product of our soil.
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But in daily life what is he? From being a trierarch he suddenly came forward as a hired writer of speeches,
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when he had disreputably squandered his patrimony. But when he had lost his reputation even in this profession, for he disclosed his clients’ arguments to their opponents, he vaulted on to the political platform. And though he made enormous profits out of politics, he laid up next to nothing. It is true that just now the Persian’s gold has floated his extravagance, but even that will not suffice, for no wealth ever yet kept up with a debauched character. And to sum it all up, he supplies his wants, not from his private income, but from your perils.
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But as regards good judgment and power of speech, how does it stand with him? Eloquent of speech, infamous of life! For so licentious has been his treatment of his own body that I prefer not to describe his conduct; for before now I have seen people hated who recount too exactly the sins of their neighbors. Then again, what is the outcome for the city? His words are fine, his acts worthless.
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But as concerns his bravery little remains for me to say. For if he denied that he is a coward, or if you did not know it as well as he does himself, the account of it would have detained me. But since he admits it himself in the assembly, and you are perfectly aware of it, it remains only to remind you of the laws as to this matter. For Solon, the ancient lawgiver, thought it necessary to apply the same penalties to the coward as to the man who failed to take the field or the man who deserted his post. For there are such things as indictments for cowardice. Some of you may indeed be surprised to know that there are indictments for inborn defects. There are. To what end? In order that each man of us, fearing the punishment of the laws more than he fears the enemy, may become a better champion of his country.
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Therefore the man who fails to take the field, and the coward, and the man who has deserted his post are excluded by the lawgiver from the purified precincts of the Agora, and may not be crowned, nor take part in the sacred rites of the people. But you, Ctesiphon, command us to crown the man who by command of the laws is uncrowned; and by your decree you invite into the orchestra at the time of the tragedies the man who has no right to enter, and into the shrine of Dionysus the man who has betrayed all our shrines through cowardice. But that I may not lead you away from the subject, remember this when he says that he is the friend of the people; examine, not his speech, but his life; and consider, not who he says he is, but who he is.
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I have mentioned crowns and rewards. Let me, fellow citizens, while I still have the matter in mind, warn you that unless you put a stop to these prodigal gifts and these crowns thoughtlessly bestowed, neither those who receive honors from you will be grateful, nor will the prosperity of the city be restored. For you will never in the world reform those who are bad, and the good you will plunge into extreme discouragement. But I will present proofs which I think will convince you that what I say is true.
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If any one should ask you whether our city seems to you more glorious in our own time or in the time of our fathers, you would all agree, in the time of our fathers. And were there better men then than now? Then, eminent men; but now, far inferior. But rewards and crowns and proclamations, and maintenance in the Prytaneum—were these things more common then than now? Then, honors were rare among us, and the name of virtue was itself an honor. But now the custom is already completely faded out, and you do the crowning as a matter of habit, not deliberately.
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Are you not therefore surprised, when you look at it in this light, that the rewards are now more numerous, but the city was then more prosperous? And that the men are now inferior, but were better then? I will try to explain this to you. Do you think, fellow citizens, that any man would ever have been willing to train for the pancratium or any other of the harder contests in the Olympic games, or any of the other games that confer a crown, if the crown were given, not to the best man, but to the man who had successfully intrigued for it? No man would ever have been willing.
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But as it is, because the reward is rare, I believe, and because of the competition and the honor, and the undying fame that victory brings, men are willing to risk their bodies, and at the cost of the most severe discipline to carry the struggle to the end. Imagine, therefore, that you yourselves are the officials presiding over a contest in political virtue, and consider this, that if you give the prizes to few men and worthy, and in obedience to the laws, you will find many men to compete in virtue’s struggle; but if your gifts are compliments to any man who seeks them and to those who intrigue for them, you will corrupt even honest minds.
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How true this is, I wish to teach you a little more explicitly. Does it seem to you that Themistocles, who was general when you conquered the Persian in the battle of Salamis, was the better man, or Demosthenes, who the other day deserted his post? Miltiades, who won the battle of Marathon, or yonder man? Further—the men who brought back the exiled democracy from Phyle? And Aristeides the Just, a title most unlike the name men give Demosthenes?
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But, by the Olympian gods, I think one ought not to name those men on the same day with this monster! Now let Demosthenes show if anywhere stands written an order to crown any one of those men. Was the democracy, then, ungrateful? No, but noble-minded, and those men were worthy of their city. For they thought that their honor should be conferred, not in written words, but in the memory of those whom they had served; and from that time until this day it abides, immortal. But what rewards they did receive, it is well to recall.
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There were certain men in those days, fellow citizens, who endured much toil and underwent great dangers at the river Strymon, and conquered the Medes in battle. When they came home they asked the people for a reward, and the democracy gave them great honor, as it was then esteemed—permission to set up three stone Hermae in the Stoa of the Hermae, but on condition that they should not inscribe their own names upon them, in order that the inscription might not seem to be in honor of the generals, but of the people.
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That this is true, you shall learn from the verses themselves; for on the first of the Hermae stands written:
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Brave men and daring were they who once by the city of Eion,
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Far off by Strymon’s flood, fought with the sons of the Medes.
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Fiery famine they made their ally, and Ares on-rushing;
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So they found helpless a foe stranger till then to defeat.
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unknown
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and on the second:
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This, the reward of their labour, has Athens bestowed on her leaders;
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Token of duty well done, honor to valor supreme.
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Whoso in years yet to be shall read these Ls in the marble,
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Gladly will toil in his turn, giving his life for the state.
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unknown
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And on the third of the Hermae stands written:
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Once from this city Menestheus, summoned to join the Atreidae,
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Led forth an army to Troy, plain beloved of the gods.
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Homer has sung of his fame, and has said that of all the mailed chieftains
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None could so shrewdly as he marshal the ranks for the fight.
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Fittingly then shall the people of Athens be honored, and called
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Marshals and leaders of war, heroes in combat of arms.
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Is the name of the generals anywhere here? Nowhere; only the name of the people.
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And now pass on in imagination to the Stoa Poecile
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; for the memorials of all our noble deeds stand dedicated in the Agora. What is it then, fellow citizens, to which I refer? The battle of Marathon is pictured there. Who then was the general? If you were asked this question you would all answer,
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Miltiades.
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But his name is not written there. Why? Did he not ask for this reward? He did ask, but the people refused it; and instead of his name they permitted that he should be painted in the front rank, urging on his men.
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Again, in the Metroön you may see the reward that you gave to the band from Phyle, who brought the people back from exile. For Archinus of Coele, one of the men who brought back the people, was the author of the resolution. He moved, first, to give them for sacrifice and dedicatory offerings a thousand drachmas, less than ten drachmas per man; then that they be crowned each with a crown of olive (not of gold, for then the crown of olive was prized, but today even a crown of gold is held in disdain). And not even this will he allow to be done carelessly, but only after careful examination by the Senate, to determine who of them actually stood siege at Phyle when the Lacedaemonians and the Thirty made their attack, not those who deserted their post—as at Chaeroneia—in the face of the advancing enemy. As proof of what I say, the clerk shall read the resolution to you.
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Resolution as to the Reward of the Band from Phyle Now over against this read the resolution which Ctesiphon has proposed for Demosthenes, the man who is responsible for our greatest disasters. The Resolution By this resolution the reward of those who restored the democracy is annulled. If this resolution is good, the other was bad. If they were worthily honored, this man is unworthy of the crown that is proposed.
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And yet I am told that he intends to say that I am unfair in holding up his deeds for comparison with those of our fathers. For he will say that Philammon the boxer was crowned at
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Olympia
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, not as having defeated Glaucus, that famous man of ancient days, but because he beat the antagonists of his own time;
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as though you did not know that in the case of boxers the contest is of one man against another, but for those who claim a crown, the standard is virtue itself; since it is for this that they are crowned. For the herald must not lie when he makes his proclamation in the theater before the Greeks. Do not, then, recount to us how you have been a better citizen than Pataecion,
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but first attain unto nobility of character, and then call on the people for their grateful acknowledgment.
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But lest I lead you away from the subject, the clerk shall read to you the epigram that is inscribed in honor of the band from Phyle, who restored the democracy.
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Epigram
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These men, noble of heart, hath the ancient Athenian people
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Crowned with an olive crown. First were they to oppose
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Tyrants who knew not the laws, whose rule was the rule of injustice.
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Danger they met unafraid, pledging their lives to the cause.
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Because they put down those who ruled unlawfully, for this cause the poet says they were honored. For then it was still in the ears of all men that the democracy was overthrown only after certain men had put out of the way the provision for the indictment of men who propose illegal measures. Yes, as I have heard my own father say,
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for he lived to be ninety-five years old, and had shared all the toils of the city, which he often described to me in his leisure hours—well, he said that in the early days of the re-established democracy, if any indictment for an illegal motion came into court, the word was as good as the deed.
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For what is more wicked than the man who speaks and does what is unlawful?
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And in those days, so my father said, they gave no such hearing as is given now, but the jurors were far more severe toward the authors of illegal motions than was the accuser himself; and it frequently happened that they made the clerk stop, and told him to read to them the laws and the motion a second time; and they convicted a man of making an illegal motion, not in case he had overleaped all the laws together, but if one syllable only was contravened. But the process as it is conducted nowadays is ridiculous. The clerk reads the statement of the illegality which is charged, and the jurors, as though hearing an incantation, or some matter which is no concern of theirs, are attending to something else.
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And already as a result of the tricks of Demosthenes you have admitted a shameful custom into your courts; for you have allowed your legal procedure to become perverted: the accuser is on the defensive, and the defendant plays the part of accuser; and the jurors sometimes forget what they are to judge, and are forced to bring in a verdict on matters which were never committed to their decision; while the defendant, if by any chance he does touch on the question at issue, pleads, not that his motion was lawful, but that on some past occasion another man has made an equally unlawful motion and been acquitted; a plea in which I hear Ctesiphon now places great confidence.
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Once the famous Aristophon of Azenia dared in your presence to boast that he had been acquitted seventy-five times on charge of making illegal motions. Not so the venerable Cephalus, famous as the truest representative of democracy—not so, but he took pride in the very opposite fact, saying that although he had been the author of more measures than any other man, he had never once been indicted for an illegal motion; an honorable pride, I think. For indictments for illegal motions were in those times brought, not only by political rivals against one another, but by friend against friend, if one was responsible for any error toward the state. Yes, the following shall serve as an illustration:
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Archinus of Coele brought an indictment for an illegal motion against Thrasybulus of Steiria, one of his own companions in the return from Phyle; and he convicted him and though his services were recent, the jurors did not take them into account; for they thought that, just as Thrasybulus had brought them back from exile then, so now when they had been restored, by making a motion which was against the laws he was driving them into exile again.
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But it is not so today; the very opposite is done. For your worthy generals, and some of those who have received maintenance in the Prytaneum, beg men off who have been indicted for illegal motions.
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But you ought to regard them as ungrateful. For if any man who has been honored in a democracy, a government which owes its safety to the gods and to the laws, dares to aid men who make illegal motions, he is undermining the government from which he received his honors.
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But I will tell you what plea is in order from the honest advocate. When an indictment for an illegal motion is tried in court, the day is divided into three parts. The first water is poured in
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for the accuser, the laws, and the democracy the second water, for the defendant and those who speak on the question at issue; but when the question of illegality has been decided by the first ballot,
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then the third water is poured in for the question of the penalty and the extent of your anger.
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Whoever therefore in the discussion on the penalty asks for your vote,
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is begging you to mitigate your anger; but he who in the first speech asks for your vote is asking you to surrender your oath, to surrender the law, to surrender the democratic constitution things which no man has a right to ask you to surrender, nor any man to grant another for his asking. Bid them, therefore, to allow you to cast your first ballot according to the laws, before they plead on the question of penalty.
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In short, fellow citizens, for my part I am almost ready to say that we ought to pass a special law governing indictments for illegal motions, which shall forbid either accuser or defendant to call in advocates. For the question of right involved is not an indefinite one, but is defined by your own laws. For as in carpentry, when we wish to know what is straight and what is not, we apply the carpenters’ rule, which serves as our standard,
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so in indictments for illegal motions there lies ready to our hand as a rule of justice this tablet, containing the measure proposed and the laws which it transgresses.
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Show that these agree one with another, Ctesiphon, and then take your seat. Why need you call Demosthenes to your support? When you overleap the just defence and call forward a rascal and a rhetorician, you cheat the ears of the jury, you injure the city, you undermine the democracy.